Developer earns R550,000 per day, game ruined his life

You may have heard of this dead simple and unforgiving mobile game called “Flappy Bird”. The game revolves around you tapping on your smart-device’s screen to make a bird fly safely through gaps between pipes.

Although the free game has been available since May 2013, it recently saw a surge of interest, causing the developer to rake in about $50,000 per day through in-game adverts.

Sounds like developer Dong Nguyen hit paydirt – but instead he has pulled the game from the IOS and Android app stores because he “couldn’t take it anymore”.

I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.

Nguyen Tweeted that it wasn’t due to any legal issues, which could be related to similar cases of reported copyright infringement with an extremely similar game called PIOU PIOU.

Nguyen then tweeted: “I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.” What this means I don’t know, but with the recent success of the game the developer has been in the media spotlight. Perhaps he has something to hide or has indeed received legal letters from other developers?

Did you manage to try this extremely addictive IOS game before it was pulled? What do you think of it?